


I've Got You

by Kira_Dattei



Series: The Old Guard Whumptober 2020 [7]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Electrocution, Established Relationship, M/M, Post-Canon, Protective Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-07
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:41:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27428848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kira_Dattei/pseuds/Kira_Dattei
Summary: Electrocution makes it difficult to walk, it being one of the few things that takes some time for their bodies to get over.Prompt: Support
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Nile Freeman & Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani & Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: The Old Guard Whumptober 2020 [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1994617
Comments: 4
Kudos: 196





	I've Got You

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not a whump writer so I can't promise a huge amount of whump in all of these. I just picked the prompt from each day that actually sparked an idea and ran with it.  
> I'm mostly using these as a way to get a feel for the characters and I simply love the relationships given in canon and wanted to explore them.  
> Joe is the lucky whumpee for most of these because I just love him.
> 
> These are all going to be one-shots and none of them are necessarily connected to each other.

“Where are the rest?” Joe heard again, bringing the grand total of that question up to sixty-four. And not even variations of the question but that exact combination of words in that exact order.

He was tempted to make a Groot reference but didn’t want to admit later to Nile that her convincing him to watch that movie had resulted in something like that. He had standards for his taunts and recent superhero movies were far below them.

What if he told this Wallace guy that he responded positively to variety?

He was an artist, after all. If things didn’t get mixed up for him, he tended to disengage and find his own amusement. That wouldn’t help Wallace get the answer that he wanted.

And right on time, eleven seconds after the question was asked, the switch was flipped and Joe’s back arched against the chair he was strapped to and grit his teeth against the electricity flowing through his body, his wrists and ankles burning under the shackles. It was left on for ten seconds and then turned off and Joe’s body went lax, twitching randomly.

Electrocution sucked so much. It had been so long since Joe had felt it that he’d sort of forgotten. Booker had been the last of them to be electrocuted and it had been Nicky before that.

Well, better him than Andy or Nile. Andy not being tortured in any way a given and he really just wanted Nile to not have to experience some of these things until she was more adjusted to the upheaval of her life. She’d already had a rough enough start and Joe thought that this current era and that they were able to find her almost immediately was ideal for her to have more stable start than _any_ of them.

The blisters on his skin under the shackles were healing much slower now, both from how much he’d revived and healed and from how electrocution just fucked with their bodies.

The man moved in close to Joe, standing right in front of him so that Joe could smell him, noting that he’d at least seemed to have brushed his teeth recently. So often when these kinds of people tried to intimidate one of them, they were lacking in the basic hygiene department.

Maybe the world really was changing, Joe mused.

“You think you can hold out forever?” Wallace asked.

Huh, some variety. Finally. And here Joe had been seriously thinking the guy was under some sort of threat of death to say anything but that same fucking question over and over again.

Joe flexed his fist, trying to get the twitching through his arms and to his fingers to stop, it getting irritating. Not having full control over what his body did was always something that he didn’t handle well. He had enough issues with his emotions getting away from him, he didn’t need the same thing from his body.

“You think we actually need you to tell us anything? If we’ve learned anything from what went down with Merrick, we just need one of you and the rest will follow.”

Joe had suspected that this was yet another lingering issue from Merrick. Just because the CEO hadn’t shared information about what he was doing with them, it didn’t mean the people under him that hadn’t been around to die in their escape had kept quiet.

How long would they be dealing with shit because of Merrick?

And, sure, how they’d gotten out of there had been far from clean and nowhere near their best work, but there had to be a limit on how long they should have to deal with this shit.

“You know that if you tell us where they are, they’ll find out where you are so much faster. Won’t that be such a relief to them? See, I’m offering you a kindness. What kind of friend wants their friends to worry li…”

The man had unconsciously been moving closer as he spoke and had finally come into the right distance. Joe smashed his forehead against the bridge of Wallace’s nose, feeling the satisfying crunch of it breaking and the man stumbled away from him.

It didn’t help Joe’s situation and he’d likely do something in retaliation but it made Joe feel better and he never claimed to make the safest decisions when he was being held captive, especially if he was on his own and didn’t have the need to protect them. Was it really his fault that these people seemed determined to piss him off every single time?

Wallace straightened up, taking his hand away from his face, lines of blood trailing down from each nostril and he glared at Joe. Which he just responded with a smug grin.

He felt the urge to taunt the guy further but he hadn’t actually spoken so far and now he felt like just staying silent to spite the guy. He’d proven plenty of times that he could get as many reactions from silence as he could from talking.

Wallace actually surprised Joe by turning and walking away, crossing to the opposite side of the room. Joe watched him carefully and then had to hold in a weary sigh when the man grabbed a large bucket and walked back over toward him. Joe closed his eyes just as Wallace upended the bucket over him, dumping cold water over him. He did that two more times, making sure Joe was thoroughly soaked and then Joe noticed that the room obviously had enough of a depression where the chair was that the water gathered into a small, shallow puddle underneath him.

Well, this was going to hurt, Joe observed.

He sort of lost track of time after that. He knows he died at least four times but Wallace was obviously trying to keep that from happening too often. It was like he thought dying was some sort of break but it wasn’t. There was no awareness of death for them. They were alive and then they were alive again a short time later, sometimes the last remaining healing being the only indication of what had caused their death.

He’d stopped asking that stupid question though and that allowed Joe to focus solely on enduring the pain. That was always easier when his patience wasn’t simultaneously being tested.

At some point there was a longer break and Joe noted that he knew that would make it worse when it started back up again. It did allow his body to recover enough that he was able to open his eyes and look around, searching for Wallace to see what he needed to be ready for.

He’d gone to the door, speaking in a low voice to someone on the other side for a few seconds before he opened the door further.

Joe wanted to laugh as the man’s head practically exploded from what Joe knew was a perfectly aimed bullet.

His Nicolo was there.

Well, not exactly there but he was close enough to bring Joe relief and he closed his eyes and let his head fall forward.

He might have fallen unconscious or at least drifted off because he was suddenly aware of hands on his cheeks and he struggled to open his eyes, tired now that he’d known he’d be free. And his body felt so sluggish and unresponsive. He was going to be feeling this for the next hour, he just knew it. And that was just what he’d feel from the electrocution. He was probably going to have a horrible headache for the rest of the day.

“Yusuf, can you please look at me?” Nicky’s voice cut through his awareness, giving him something to focus on because he would always do everything he could to give his love all that he asked for.

And he really did try to open his eyes. They fluttered with the effort he put into such a simple action but he just couldn’t control the movement of his body enough yet. He’d be able to in a few minutes, just not right now.

“I wish to see your eyes, _hayati_ ,” Nicolo urged him.

“I’m working on it,” he replied, his words slurring. He tried to lift his hand to touch Nicky in return, feeling like it was a larger motion so it had to be easier. That and he really wanted to touch Nicky. But his wrists were still clamped down so he couldn’t even do that.

“Hold on a moment, Yusuf. You’ll be freed in a moment.” There was a short pause and when Nicky spoke again, his voice was tense with suppressed rage. “Did he do anything besides electrocute you?”

“He asked me the same thing sixty-four times. Sixty-four times, Nicolo!” His voice and body shuddered with the cold of the water and continued effects of the electrocution as he spoke but it helped him feel a little better.

Finally Joe’s eyes were cooperating enough to open and he was greeted with the very welcome sight of his love’s blue-green eyes.

“You still haven’t answered me,” Nicky pointed out, sounding less angry.

“Yes I have. I know my speech isn’t completely clear yet but you must have understood me telling you the man asked me the same thing sixty-four times. Nicolo, my ears were beginning to bleed from hearing it.”

“Is he serious?” Nile’s voice came from somewhere across the room and Joe tried to lean enough to look around Nicky to see her. He hoped she was guarding the door and not looking for the keys to let him go so that she didn’t see the equipment Wallace was using against him.

He could protect her from even knowing what had been done to him so she wouldn’t ask questions about it. Because while he wished her to not face some of what they experienced he also wouldn’t lie to her. He embellished stories regularly to help her get used to his tells but he never lied about what she would also experience. If she asked what it was like to be tortured through electrocution, he would describe it in extensive detail so as to prepare her.

Nicky was checking Joe over as he replied to Nile, “Yes, it has always been one of the more effective ways to get to him.”

“English may be far from the most elegant of languages, illegitimate bastard that it is, but it does offer a wide variety of options on how to convey the same message without saying the same thing over and over again.”

While his body was still twitching with the remnants of being electrocuted, now he was beginning to shiver constantly, his body not regulating its temperature as well on top of still being soaked with cold water.

“Got ‘em!” Nile declared and jogged up beside Nicky, handing a small keyring with about half a dozen keys on it and Nicky went to work finding the right one to release Joe. He pulled the shackles off Joe one at a time and the bloody skin slowly repaired itself once Joe was free. Once the last shackle was dropped from his ankle, Joe moved to stand but his legs still weren’t recovered enough to reliably support him, his knees shaking violently enough to be seen through his jeans.

Nicky immediately noticed and pulled his sniper rifle off his back and handed it off to Nile before stepping under Joe’s arm, which was also shaking.

Nile slung the rifle across her back and pulled out her handgun before leading the way to the door.

“Andy’s waiting with the car,” she announced before she checked to make sure the hall was clear, signaling for them to follow.

“You broke his nose, didn’t you,” Nicky declared as they stepped over Wallace, Joe not even bothering giving him another look.

“He put himself in range,” Joe said for the extent of his explanation.

Nicky didn’t need him to explain anything though. It was Nicky and he knew Joe well. After all, no one’s bones had been broken by Joe more than Nicky. Those days where they were killing each other and even a few times in the years before they actually accepted each other as allies were full of broken bones and Nicky knew what set Joe off. Joe didn’t allow a mistake like coming in close enough to be injured go unpunished and Nicky knew that.

“How ya doing, Joe?” Nile asked when they caught up to her where the hall turned.

He did a quick check of himself, frustrated at how much he was still trembling. “Still not ready to walk on my own and probably won’t be for another hour at least.”

Nicky’s hold on his wrist and around his hips tightened. That was enough to tell him just how much Wallace had hit Joe.

“Think you guys can work something out then? We didn’t actually clear this place before heading your way. We were scouting it out when we happened to see that guy knock on the door of the room you were in. We sort of had to accelerate plans from there.”

“Do you have a weapon for me? While my charming demeanor can be sharp and scathing enough, it isn’t as effective at killing people.”

Nile glanced over at Nicky, giving him a questioning look that Joe understood to be her checking with him and Joe made a mental note to have a talk with her about that later. If he asked for a weapon, he could hold one and use it better than anyone he came across. He knew how to work around his body’s trembling, knew how to land a shot even as his arm and hand shook because he’d trained himself to know that. It wasn’t a matter of ego but a matter of time-tested fact.

He didn’t really blame her as she’d been in the military and so it was likely that most of the men she’d known would have been speaking from baseless ego but she needed to adjust her mind to it being them speaking.

Nile eventually slipped one arm out of the strap of her gear bag and let it drop enough so she could reach inside and pulled out another handgun, handing it off to Joe. He felt it’s load by the weight and flipped his grip so he could check that a round was chambered before rotating his hand back around to hold it securely, flipping off the safety. He didn’t fumble the motion once even though his hand started shaking once he let it drop to his side.

Nile watched him closely throughout the entire process and seemed satisfied enough with what she saw.

“Stop spending so much time around Andy. You’re picking up her stares,” he accused. “And if we can pick up a jacket on the way, that’ll help a lot. I’m freezing.”

“Fine, fine, let’s go,” Nile acquiesced as she turned back to where they were heading and Nicky shifted his hold a little, the difference making it easier for Joe to move.

It wasn’t the first time Nicky had needed to carry some of Joe’s weight and he knew what to do.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much fore reading and I hope you enjoyed.


End file.
